Inez Harker-Schuch was only three, but she vividly remembers her terror as the world disintegrated around her.

Sheets of corrugated-iron were flying through the air, and trees were impossibly contorted. "It was as if the world had gone mad with fury", she recalls, "it was the shriek of the wind, the violence and the destruction."

The experience changed her perception of Christmas forever.

"The idea that a cyclone could come on Christmas Eve at midnight to destroy a city was just beyond what anybody could imagine – no-one expected it."

Inez's family were huddled in their house until it started to break-up around them. At the peak of the cyclone, the windows imploded showering them with glass, and they were forced them to flee into their Volkswagen beetle parked under their house.

They watched in disbelief as the neighbour's roof lifted from the house, then blew away. She recalls the flashes of lightning as he sprinted across his yard to join them in the car.

Peak winds on the day can only be estimated because the wind-gauge was destroyed, but it's believed it reached over 240 kmh.

Inez is visibly affected as she tells her story which she still finds traumatic. Everything they owned disappeared: furniture, toys, photographs, mementos - all gone. After the cyclone, they spent the next four years in Darwin living in a cramped caravan parked on a concrete slab, trying to rebuild.

Instead of retreating from the past, it has given Inez ambition to help solve the problem of climate change. I asked her if climate change might be a larger, slow motion version of the same thing, like a scaled-up cyclone?

"I think it's much worse", she says. "It's global – and we know we're walking into this. We also know we can do something about it."

After studying earth sciences in Austria and Denmark, she began teaching environmental science in schools. It was then that she realised conventional teaching methods weren't enough because they were often too static and abstract. She began building on an online 3D computer game called CO2peration that would bring climate science to life.

Players become a photon and go on an adventure through the solar system, learning how climate works. "They uncover the secrets of our little blue, shimmering planet", she says.

"Along the way, there's fun stuff, like shooting space debris from the exosphere, or building your own space probe. Climate is a fascinating thing. We've made it fun."

They tested a prototype of the game on nearly 800 Canberra students, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. A teacher said the game had managed to engage one of her students who, suffering from ADHD, often struggles to concentrate for longer than a few minutes.

"I've never seen her concentrate on something for so long – but she's been at it for 10 minutes and she hasn't looked up once," the teacher said.

Inez says, "I was pleasantly surprised because the game was only a rough draft. It was a poignant moment. No-one has done this before."

Inez is now working to complete the game as part of her PhD at the ANU. To fund the project she's launched a Kickstarter campaign.

As well as the satisfaction of seeing the game played in schools, she also recalls the first pledge to the campaign. "It was a complete stranger. Someone thought this idea worth giving their money to. Having that person pledge said that people care. And that is what is going to make a difference: people caring".

Rod Taylor produces the Ask Fuzzy column each Sunday in the Canberra Times. His current book is Renewing Australia.

Tayloram2000@zoho.com

Get a copy of the CO2peration game by joining the Kickstarter campaign, which runs until 9th of November.